Last year South Africa’s state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) announced that the restructuring of its steel subsidiary Scaw Metals into three standalone entities was at an advanced stage, as were plans to secure strategic equity partners (SEPs) for each of the units.

Earlier this year it was announced that the IDC had reached an agreement with Barnes Southern Palace (BSP) to buy into Scaw’s rolled products and wire rod products businesses, which employ more than half of Scaw’s 3 500 workforce.

Shortly thereafter the Competition Commission approved the proposed merger, without conditions, whereby Magotteaux International SA (Magotteaux) intended to acquire an interest in and acquire management control in Grinding Media South Africa (Pty) Ltd (GM Newco), which was formerly the grinding media business division of Scaw Metals South Africa.

The Germiston facility of Cast Products South Africa is also known as the Union Junction Works. This facility comprises a number of units. Besides the specialist foundry manufacturing rail freight wheels there is a further foundry and a machine shop on site

Cast Products South Africa has been a long time partner with Amsted Rail, a global leader in freight wagon components, manufacturing under license cast monoblock railway wheels for the local railway market

This latest development has been submitted to the Competition Commission and is awaiting approval. The Cast Products division has been a long time partner with Amsted Rail, a global leader in freight wagon components, manufacturing under license cast monoblock railway wheels for the local railway market. Cast Products South Africa produces railway wheels using modern curved plate design, which ensures lower operating stress to improve fatigue life. All wheels are produced in AAR M108 Grade C material, which gives excellent wear properties, according to the company. The wheel products include 34” cast wheels for general freight operations (22 ton axle load) and 36” cast wheels for heavy haul operations (32.5 ton axle load) typically found on the coal and iron ore lines.

Cast Products South Africa’s wheel plant manufactures an average of 3 200 wheels in a month with the average weight of 380 kilograms per wheel. Transnet SOC, South Africa’s state-owned freight transport and handling company, is one of Cast Products South Africa’s larger customers.

Cast Products South Africa
In future the company will be known as Cast Products South Africa and rebranding, signing of existing contracts to incorporate the new name and a new website has already begun. Visit www.castproducts.co.za to find out more about the company.

Cast Products South Africa also offers heat treatment services

Included in the recent investments has been the installation of a Foundry Automation 150 litre core blower. A core that use to take 45 minutes now only takes three and a half minutes

Cast Products South Africa’s head office will continue to operate from its existing offices and facilities in Germiston, Gauteng and there will be no changes to its other foundry facilities – Boksburg Foundry and Eclipse East Foundry.

Cast Products South Africa is a leading manufacturer of specialised, high quality cast products used in the mining, railway, power and general engineering industries and produces castings with a finished weight of 30 tons. Cast Products South Africa comprises of four foundries and is one of the largest foundry groups in the Southern Hemisphere.

This extensive foundry network enables Cast Products South Africa to streamline production of a wide variety of products, including large girth gear segments, large high chromium iron coal pulverising wear parts, mill liners, slag pots, locomotive frames, bogie castings, couplers and drawgear as well as and cast monoblock railway wheels. Products included in the large girth gear segment include high carbon, high chromium and abrasion resisting coal girth gears. Girth gears are cast in either one piece, halves, quarters and occasionally in fifths. Each individual segment may weigh between seven and 25 tons.

In 2016 Cast Products South Africa commissioned a new R160 million high-volume moulding line manufactured by Omega Foundry Machinery

The semi automatic closed loop system produces castings in low carbon and low alloy steels up to 1.2 tons per box. Boxes can be configured to include one, two and four castings per box and the company can produce 30 boxes per day

Other products manufactured include undercarriage parts for various mining shovels such as crawler shoes/track pads, drive tumblers, idlers, rollers, high chromium iron mill liners and impact crushing parts, stainless steel coiler drums and a large range of slag pots and ladles for the minerals processing industry. Cast Products South Africa also designs and manufactures cone and gyratory crusher wear parts in a range of materials including bowls, mantles, concave segments, torch rings and jaws as well as blowbars/hammers, impact plates and wear plates.

Germiston Union Junction Works
The Germiston facility of Cast Products South Africa is also known as the Union Junction Works. This facility comprises a number of units. Besides the specialist foundry manufacturing rail freight wheels there is a further foundry and a machine shop on site.

The major activities of the second foundry are to manufacture single piece thin walled locomotive and passenger car frames and freight car components. Locomotive bogie frames manufactured of cast steel far exceeds that of fabricated frames. Locomotive bogie frames are manufactured for all track gauges with axle loads from 15 000kg to 40 000kg.

The foundry holds the TPG accreditation for special processes such as castings, welding and NDT (Nondestructive testing) and American Association of Railroads accreditation to manufacture locomotive bogie frames. Other accreditations include ISO9001:2008, ISO14001:2009 and BS OHSAS 18001:2007.

R160 million high-volume Omega moulding line
In 2016 the company commissioned a new R160 million high-volume moulding line, manufactured by Omega Foundry Machinery. The semi automatic closed loop system produces castings in low carbon and low alloy steels up to 1.2 tons per box. Boxes can be configured to include one, two and four castings per box and the company can produce 30 boxes per day. The installation also included a G-U-T 40 ton per hour sand reclamation plant and in-line after cast processing, within the existing Union Junction foundry buildings. This foundry is capable of producing at least 3 150 sets of freight wagon bogie components per year, which equates to 11 200 tons.

Products manufactured on the new line include side frames, bolsters, couplers, yokes and shafts

Installed in the semi-automatic closed loop moulding line was an Omega 100TPH continuous mixer that is combined with an Omega 20TPH underhung facing sand mixer

At this stage the castings manufactured are mostly servicing the railway industry. Products manufactured on the new line include side frames, bolsters, couplers, yokes and shafts. The foundry has the capacity to supply annual quantities of 56 000 cast bogie components.

The foundry has a Heinrich Wagner Sinto fully automatic high-pressure air-flow squeeze moulding machine that is designed to make 20 moulds per hour. Maximum size of a casting produced on this moulding machine is 500 kilograms.

This facility also has a floor moulding section. Other products manufactured are high chrome white iron grinding rings, balls and grinding media under license to Doering Cylpebs. Known as the Eclipsoid these products are chill cast using a continuous casting technique and are available in low and high alloy grades in sizes 40mm, 54mm, 73mm and 96mm.

The foundry is capable of producing 750 tons of castings per month.

Boksburg Foundry
Boksburg Foundry manufactures a complete range of manganese mill liners, screens and grids used in the gold mining industry. The mill liners are used in steel ball mills to protect the body/shell of the mill and are designed so that the steel balls get locked into the liners to assist with wear. The foundry is capable of producing 650 tons of castings per month.

Cast Products South Africa is a leading manufacturer of specialised, high quality cast products used in the mining, railway, power and general engineering industries and produces castings with a finished weight of up to 30 tons. Cast Products South Africa comprises of four foundries and is one of the largest foundry groups in the Southern Hemisphere. This extensive foundry network enables Cast Products South Africa to streamline production of a wide variety of products, including large girth gear segments, large high chromium iron coal pulverising wear parts, mill liners and slag pots, bogie castings, couplers and drawgear as well as and cast monoblock railway wheels

The installation also included a G-U-T 40 ton per hour shake out station and sand reclamation plant and in-line after cast processing, within the existing Union Junction foundry buildings. Additional equipment installed included a Nederman 80 000m3/hr dedusting filter for the thermal reclamation plant suitable for gas temperatures of up 250 degrees Celsius and the Nederman 50 000m3/hr dedusting filter for the Clansman grinders

All of the foundries are serviced by in-house machine shops, which include vertical and horizontal boring mills, computer numerical controlled (CNC) machining centers, lathes and planers. Castings of 25 tons and five metres in diameter can be produced to close tolerances. Smaller castings that require CNC batch production runs are also accommodated.

Cast Products South Africa is under interim management until all regulatory details have been cleared.